Reasons and Causes

Extract

In a deservedly esteemed paper, Donald Davidson has argued “that rationalization [that is, the explanation of an action in terms of reasons, in the sense in which “the reason explains the action by giving the agent's reason for doing what he did”] is a species of ordinary causal explanation” (685). Davidson himself, of course, in putting his own view forward, knowingly opposes a relatively widespread tendency to deny the thesis. I wish, in turn, to attempt to redeem the doctrine that there is a difference between explanation by causes and explanation by reasons, but I find that it cannot be done, so to speak, by reversing the clock: Davidson's arguments are very telling and the defence of the distinction must, I believe, support a significantly diminished claim. So, for example, I think we must go the distance with Davidson in admitting that “to describe an event in terms of its cause is not to identify the event with its cause, [and that] explanation by redescription … [does not] exclude causal explanation” (685); also, that there is no convincing reason “why on earth … a cause [should] turn an action into a mere happening and a person into a helpless victim” (700).